


Beautiful

by ConstancePenman



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, But it is a nice day outside, Drugs, PTSD, Post-fade Hawke is real screwed up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 21:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6825295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstancePenman/pseuds/ConstancePenman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which post-fade Hawke attempts to deal with the repercussions of what she went through rather poorly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful

It was a bright and beautiful day. The birds were singing, the sun was shining down on vibrant flowers, the sky was an incredible blue, and Hawke couldn't care less. These days, she wasn't sure of she could care at all. 

She'd tried to be happy after escaping the fade. She really had. For Fenris telling her about his and Donnic's games, for Isabela sneaking her booze when Aveline had specifically given orders not to do just that, for Varric telling her the extravagant tales about herself that he had told the inquisitor, for everyone, it seemed, that was not her.

It was on days like these--beautiful and warm, things that used to be her--that Hawke felt the worst. She hated the smiles plastered on her friends' faces to conceal their sadness. She knew that they weren't as happy as they pretended to be around her, she knew that she wasn't the same Hawke as she used to be, try as she might. She had been ruined by the fade, by everything that she had been shown, by her own treacherous mind. 

It was in days like these that Hawke needed to escape.

She had spent so long unstable that being on steady feet had become intrinsically wrong to her. It was better to have her feet off the ground. It was even better when just tipsy or high enough to feel numb. It was best when she was both.

Hawke knew this wasn't good for her. She wasn't delusional (anymore). She also knew her friends would be more likely to care if something wasn't good for her, so she made sure they didn't know. She took great care to imitate her own writing style in her letters to Carver, she cheated at Wicked Grace just enough to never arouse suspicion, and she would respond to Isabela's flirtatious, yet concerned inquiries and Fenris' stonefaced fright with precise accuracy as to how she would have spoken.

Varric was the one that had helped her with that. At first it was just his stories about her that she could get anything from, but one day, while he was visiting from Skyhold, he had caught her with his unfinished drafts of his next book. (It wasn't about her leaving the fade--that, she was glad about. It was, she was fairly certain, entirely fictional.) He had assured her that that was not the best way to recover her own personality. He had tried to convince her to let it come naturally, but he never could resist helping his best friend. She was still certain of that much.

So he had told her what really happened. What she had really said. She wondered why he wrote so far away from the truth when he remembered everything so well. She didn't ask. 

She would pretend to be okay, to be herself, to be sober, to be fully there. She got good at it. The only one of her friends who had any real idea of what might be going on was Varric, and the rest were heavily suspicious. But she couldn't let them worry. Not about her. Not when she had everything under control from her place half an inch off the ground with her head miles further.

The day was beautiful, and Hawke smiled, but she did not care.


End file.
